Enter Destruction
by Solar Flare1
Summary: it starts with the warlords, but lookout, somebodys dead...
1. Default Chapter

untitled

Disclaimer: The only characters I own are mine, and all the rest belong to their creators, and or Sunrise.  
  
Authors Note:  
Well, here we are at the beginning, and I will   
try with all my power to make this a better   
go that the last.  
  
  
Enter Destruction  
Solar Flare  
  
It looked like a normal day when the end began. Green gray clouds rolled above the great palace and a warm wind blew sporadically around the crowd waiting before the palace. The crowd is what sticks out in my mind, they were what made that day different from any other. Them, and the grim spectical they had come to see. The platform was already prepared when I was brought to witness the traitors execution. His evilness had not yet arrived but the doomed had been in their cadges since true night. My feet rang hollowly on the boards of the platform and the doomed turned to look, to see who came. No recognition showed on their faces, we had said our goodbyes before this final meeting and I did not want to be recognized. I did not want my teachers to know what part I had played in there doom. One does not present your self to your former leaders as the pet priest of the lord who defeated them after all. I stood before the semi circle of cages, in the black robes his evilness had ordered I wear and with the double bladed battle axe chosen for this moment in hand. Four heads turned to look at me. Green, white, black and blue hair lifted to reveal eyes that glared out at me and all I represented. Part of me turned away from them then, my teachers and friends. Sekhmet, Dais, Kayura, Kale, there was no escape for them now, Kilcule had made sure of that. I had helped him and they had suspected nothing, even at the end, but it seems I should start at the beginning of the long road that led us all here to this traitor's execution.  
  
I suppose the beginning of the road lies with Talpa, or rather with his defeat. I was already in the palace by then. I grew up in those grim halls, under the eyes of grim warriors. The great lords I knew on sight and even then I knew their power. Cruelty, Venom, Corruption, and Illusion, they were power beyond the scope of anything I had ever seen but not beyond the scope of what I was to know. Destruction was my name, Lorelei, I was and am. We were children, brought in by our master Talpa. He brought us to his palace to learn, to become shadows, human blades, tailored to move at his will through the worlds he meant to make his own. I was not the only one of the blade bound, we were many, and we were as moralistic as any sword. Then the unthinkable happened. Our great master, the force that had dominated this dark realm for time out of mind was gone. Defeated, vanquished, never to return to power, never to gather to his hands the blades that his will had forged. Without his hands to hold his realm the old wars reared their heads, like treacherous serpents. The lesser warlords gathered their supporters around themselves and prepared for a war of supremacy to take the empty thrown in the palace of the overlord. My world had been held together only by the chains of hatred Talpa had laid on us, and those chains were strong and old, but now they snapped. Into this backlash, when all were at each others throats, the Warlords returned from the lost war for the world, Earth. They came changed, they were not as they had been, no longer did they follow the road through evil. Lead by the lady Kayura they gathered what power they could and reached out to consolidate the fighting lords again. Their goal was war no longer, peace became that which we fought for. The blades that Talpa had forged for his use were turned to a new task by the warlords. We became the strength in the armies of the Warlords. Venom, Corruption, and Illusion each went out and put down the rebellions where ever they found them. I did not go to serve with my fellows, I stayed behind for special training. I had come under the lady's notice, as being the youngest of the blades in training and so I was called to learn a new task. For me came the lessons of a warrior priest, to Follow Lady Kayura as aid, and future replacement. Kayura understood what it meant to be a blade, she had been the best of us for years beyond count after all. Under her I learned and under the Warlords, once they returned, as well. They tried so hard to heal the Dynasty of the legacy of hate Talpa had left it. They were not as successful as the thought. Hate is hard to unlearn, and we had been steeped in it for time past the oldest memory of my people. Kayura saw the face of the Dynasty she wanted to see, the beautiful one. She saw the rolling planes, the water lily fields, the strangely beautiful skies. I think the warlords saw the hard face, barren rock, warlike peoples, hidden anger. None of them saw what I saw though. They didn't see the rebellion forming, they didn't hear the whispers. I did.   
I was approached by one of the most up and coming of the revolutionaries, or rather by one of his representatives. They knew I would help them, Kilkoul, he knew where the hole in my armor lay, and he was not a fool to leave any weakness unexploited. Never in what were to become long dealings was any words ever exchanged, but by certain signs I was given to understand the destruction I would bring to a certain personage of a mutual acquaintance to myself and his evilness. Officially I was promised position as high priestess and nearly unlimited independence to pursue my own devices so long as I did not interfere. Unofficially it was made clear that any interference would be taken out of my unfortunate friend in Kilkoul's keeping. Alone these terms might not have been sufficient, but Kilkoul was one of the blades and blades worked together after all. He was not to know, however of my goals, I knew power by that point, how could I not as a child of the dynasty, and blade of Talpa? I would have what I wanted, and on that list was vengeance.  
I spent a good deal of time after that sending plans of the palace out to Kilkoul's forces and providing them with inside information about the inner workings of the whole compound. Then it came. The orders to prepare for attack, the armies were marshaled, plans were finished, the rebellion was coming in. Kayura got the word at first light, she summoned the Warlords to her and they laid the best plans they could in what little time they had left. They knew it was over I think, there was a desperation in everything they did, everything they said. They knew they had to try but I don't think they expected to win. They didn't, Kilkoul knew everything by then, and he left them no way out. No way out for any of us, no way at all. He came with spells to hold the armors away from the warlords, Dais was most unhappy to discover Kilkoul had gotten his hands on one of the attacks he himself had used in the war for Earth. The fall was not swift but I will pass over that time of death and bloodshed that was and look instead to the death that was to come. Kilkoul gained the castle at sunrise the next morning, and he gathered what was left of his troops together for the last battle. He and the warlords fought at last in the throne room and the foundations shook with their fighting, all in vain. All was ended by noon, without their armors the warlords had been no mach for Kilkoul, who by the use of numbers, had finally overcome them all. By the night we had a new overlord. I will say this now, I served him, and over time I came to respect his cunning, but never did I like him, and never was I a willing helper in his deeds. I waited and I watched as he sentenced my teachers, traitors he charged them,. And as traitors he condemned them. The first night of his rule would be their last night in this world. They were taken to the cells arranged for them, and I was taken and invested as High Priestess to a dark and evil lord. It was not the last thing I did that day. I was soon forgotten and once so freed I went down, down to the courtyard where the cages of the doomed awaited, down to say a last farewell. They were waiting for me, they knew I would come. It was like to a grave down there in the dark, but I had to go, and I had to take the charge my lady left with me. "Keep these out of his hands." Kayura said to me that night, there in the dark. "The armors are not for the likes of him, you have to find those who can take up the armors. Promise me Lorelei, you are all that stands between this place and destruction." It was there, to the doomed, that I made the second oath I could never break, would never break. I took the orbs from the warlords, one at the time as I passed a moment before each cage. I could not see them but maybe they wanted it that way, then I returned to Kayura and she gave me my final instructions. Then I was gone, I did not look back as I left them there waiting for the morning that would bring the end. Morning came hard on the heels of night, and with it the execution, I went, and I read the judgement that was passed for all who came to hear. There under the green skies, before the hosts of evil I lost what innocence remained to me. These hands of mine are hands of a destroyer, this blade that I carry still is the breath of death. With these hands and this blade, I completed my lords command. I raised my blade that day, and cemented the rule of another demon over my people and my world, all for a solitary oath and a single life. 


	2. First of Four

untitled

Disclaimer- I think y'all know I don't own any   
of the Ronins who appear in this tale or any   
other, and if you didn't, I just told you, so  
now you do.  
  
Authors Note- to bring anybody new up to   
speed, yes, I killed the warlords in the last   
instalment! That's pretty much all, now   
onward to the next instalment.  
  
  
  
First of Four  
Solar Flare  
  
In the days after he came into his power Kilkoul made strong his control of the Talpa's lands and turned them again against their ancient foes. He knew that to bring all the feuding lords together he would have to set them on a single target. Earth. It was well done, mending the chains Talpa had help us in, providing a return to the old ways. I saw it all, how he played his generals against each other, gathering the strongest to him and binding them with oath and spell into his service. Rather having me bind them into his service. There was much contesting amont these lords to be the first to resume the attack on earth in the hopes of wining lory for themselves, and raised status in Kilkoul's court. Fools all of them, none were so great as my lost teachers, and I think this haunted Kilkoul, he was furious to discover that the Warlords had preserved their powers from him. Oh course I didn't tell him I had the armors, I am not such a fool as that. Although in the days that came after, I nearly proved myself several other kinds of idiot.   
  
When at last a lord was chosen to go first into the world it was the Hound's Man that was called. He was a strange sort, and not bright for al his strength, both in arms and in the number of men he commanded. So he went, out to the boundary, and there he established a holding to his liking and prepared to make an assault on the gates. In the days before Talpa's ill fated assault the gates had been watched from the other side but never barred. This had changed, for it seemed, the watchers had turned their hands against us and would keep the people of my world from theirs. I could hardly blame them. I went to the border as well, the Hound didn't know that though. Kilkoul did not trust such a one not to overstep his bounds while out of his masers sight. It took some doing to convince him to sent me, and not one of the other blades left in the palace. I won, I think, only through Kilkoul's need to trust someone. It is hard to live among souls you can never trust.   
  
I followed after the Hound, and took up residence in an overlooked portion of the building. None saw me there, and I was free to move as I liked both in the compound the Hound had established, and it the realm of Earth. The greater gates might be strongly bared, but such gates as I made and used, while not without risk, were possible. Kayura had showed me the trick to them. I hid nothing when I say that you world, this world of men and machines is a vast and strange one to me. Coming as I did then from a feudal error left behind in this world many hundreds of years. I was alarmed beyond words on that first trip I made. I believe I cause quite a stir, dressed as I was in the garb of my time. I learned later that I had been in things called tabloids for nearly a week after that first appearance. It really probably didn't help that I carried my ax with me and stopped traffic for over an hour after nearly getting flattened by what I know now is a bus. I do not like busses, nor any of these machines that run on wheels without horses. On that same thought, that bus driver had a very extended vocabulary. The time I spent there, in that part of this world was not spent doing the work of those who thought themselves my masters. No, I looked ever and always for those who would become my NeoWarlords. I looked then for the first of the four. I found her to, though not in the place I would have hope, and not in the guise I had expected.  
  
It was then that the Hound finally broke the bar on the gates and made his first venture out into the world of Earth. In his first sortie his men met with the force who had lain the barrier on the gates, and hungry for the secrets of such a feat, brought her back to the Hound. When I found what they had done, some time after the fact, actually. I went to see this person for myself, a luckier thing I may have never done. I came after the guards had departed for a time and went to look for myself. The cells occupant knelt on the stone floor, arms bound back behind her and she watched me as I opened the door. I wondered then about the wisdom of leaving her so with the door open to all comers. Leaving the door open to cast what light there was into the cell I went to get a good look at her, and was much amazed. Such a face I had not seen in longer than I care to remember. Here were old words come back to haunt, here in a place o dark, and in a one I could not leave. The child before me now looked at me with eyes as blank as long empty windows, eyes like unto one of my teachers, Kale's. Finding this one here changed much, how much I had not yet guessed. Leaving here there was out of the question. I looked then at the bonds used in keeping her there, the Hound was, it seemed, rather good at devising shackles. The girls arms were bound across her back so that each hand grasped the opposite elbow. This binding was part of o complex harness arrangement that held her, by means of a chain to the wall.   
  
I was a long time getting her out of it. Never being especially good at lock work I concentrated on the mechanism holding her to the wall. It took time, and I was ever expecting to find one of the guards returned while I worked, but none came. Then we were gone. In all that time neither of us had said a word, I for fear of discovery, but I do not think that my new companion could have spoken to me had I asked it of her. The harness she wore was one of the binding spells I had been taught to recognize and once we reached the relative safety of my rooms I got it of her. It took three different cuts to get the whole thing off her, and I would have been rather mad about everything but the end, if it hadn't been sch a devious shackle. I chucked the remains of the binding in a corner and took another look and my new acquisition. Longish hair of a dirty blond color, dark blue green eyes, and a very confused expression were the only really unique things about the girl. The eyes I couldn't do anything about, but if I was going to hide her not only from the Hound, but from his evilness, the hair had to go. I took it off by hands with the same knife I had used for the shackles and the result was many layers of many lengths, the longest of which just brushed her shoulders. The last thing I did was change the color, I didn't have what I would have needed to dye all of it, but with a little black and blue dye, it wasn't dirty blond anymore. I had hoped tat getting the girl out from under the Hound's control would bring her senses back but it hadn't happened by then, and I didn't have enough time to think about what I was doing. If I had it might have kept me from making Talpa's mistake with Kayura over again. I went back out into the used parts of the outpost and stole a length of chain and a flat disk such as were used on the great black dogs on which the Hounds strength was based. From there it was neither a long process or a hard one to bind the girl to my will. I learned later that her true name was Koranna, but there for a while she was mine, and I named her Nari. She is mine still, and so is the armor I gave her. The mindless girl I had stolen from that dark dungeon an a whim had become the first of the four I had to find. She had become my Nari, my Corruption, and I sent her out to hunt the dark places of the world, but I did not send her alone. 


End file.
